Murder-for-hire scheme, which actually was a federal sting, gets Pittsburgh man 8 years in prison

TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.

A former Pittsburgh man was ordered to spend eight years in prison for an interstate murder-for-hire plan that involved killing his wife.

Brad Lanese, 52, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon.

Prosecutors say Lanese and two others, including his wife, operated a large marijuana grow operation in Northern California.

When he was told to leave, Lanese went to Pittsburgh to ask a man to help him rob the operators. He then changed his mind.

The man turned out to be a source for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the government said.

On Oct. 31, 2017, Lanese and the source traveled to California. The next day, Lanese and the confidential source met with “Deeds,” a DEA operative acting in an undercover capacity who was to provide firearms and support for the robbery.

According to the DEA, Lanese next told “Deeds” he no longer wanted to rob his wife, but instead wanted “Deeds” to murder her.

Lanese then hired “Deeds” to inject the wife with a fatal dose of heroin/fentanyl mix in the marijuana fields, and push her body and car over a cliffs and into the Pacific Ocean.

Lanese told “Deeds” that once the wife was dead, he would be able to return to the marijuana grow operation and pay him $30,000 for the murder.

Instead, Lanese was soon arrested. He was initially charged in December 2017.

Chuck Biedka is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Chuck at 724-226-4711, cbiedka@tribweb.com or via Twitter .

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.